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Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Coffee Ice cream

A few miles from my house we have an amazing ice cream shop. But not just any ice cream shop. It's the ice cream shop that won Best Ice Cream Shop on Good Morning, America last year. So, as you can imagine, it's got some daaang good ice cream. Being that it's only a few minutes from our house we go there pretty often during the summer.
Then, about a year ago, Brian bought me the kitchenaid ice cream maker attachment and I could make that delectable ice cream at home! I had some success last year with cinnamon ice cream and chocolate ice cream. Then over the summer I bought The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz and discovered that the ice cream recipes in this book- and this coffee ice cream in particular- were as good if not better than the ice cream shop options!

This coffee ice cream is my absolute favorite ice cream I've ever had. It helps that I use a local grass-fed, organic dairy's cream. It's fresh and not homogenized, and ultra creamy. it makes the best ice cream (I've done extensive studies. :) ) and I like that I can make it decaf since I am sensitive to caffeine. This is one ice cream that I pretty much always have in the freezer.

Directions:
In a medium sauce pan heat the milk, whole coffee beans, salt and ½C of the cream until warmed (but not boiling), then cover and set aside to steep at room temperature for 1 hour.

Pour the rest of the cream into a bowl and set a fine mesh strainer over the top of the bowl.

Re-heat the coffee bean/milk mixture until warm again. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl beat the egg yolks. Pour the coffee bean mix into the egg bowl. Stir constantly or you'll end up with scrambled eggs. Scrape everything back into the sauce pan and continue to heat, stirring constantly until the cream coats your spatula well.

Pour custard through the strainer into the cream, then press the coffee beans well to extract all of the coffee flavor possible. Discard the beans and mix the vanilla and ground coffee into the custard.

Place the mixture in an ice bath until cooled, then refrigerate until chilled completely. Transfer to your ice cream maker and freeze according to the ice cream maker instructions.

I personally prefer to eat the ice cream directly out of the maker- it's like a slushy coffee milk shake (as shown above in the photo) but this does harden up to a thick, creamy solid ice cream after just a few short hours. Enjoy!